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Mayonnaise

A cold, emulsified sauce made from egg yolk, oil, mustard, salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mayonnaise

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the plate, oil, and egg are very cold.

Make the emulsion

  1. Break the yolk into a shallow dish and stir with a fork in one direction.

  2. Add the oil drop by drop, waiting for it to fully combine before adding more.

  3. After about four tablespoons of oil, add a pinch of mustard, salt, and pepper while continuing to stir.

  4. Add a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar and keep stirring until all the oil is incorporated.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the sauce together as a thick emulsion.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, providing richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Mustard
Acts as a secondary emulsifier, helping the oil and yolk stay combined and stable.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the finished emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil added too fast cannot be dispersed into the yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns greasy and runny. Each addition must fully combine before the next to build a stable, thick emulsion.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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